Prior research has shown that people with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) often experience difficulties recognizing faces and even emotional responses. This, many speculate, is what leads individuals with autism to exhibit social communication problems.
But the problem with this understanding is that we’ve never had any clear evidence of how a brain affected by autism perceives the human face and body. This has left us with plenty of questions, but a new study led by Waseda University in Japan could prove this theory wrong and completely change everything we thought we know about how individuals with ASD perceive the faces and bodies of those around them.
Challenging long-held beliefs
The belief that individuals with ASD often suffer from social communication issues that are driven by how their brains perceive others is a long-standing one. However, as noted above, there’s never been any scientific proof to back it up. In this new study from Waseda University, scientists took detailed neuroimages of 23 adults with ASD and compared them to the neuroimages of 23 typically developing (TD) adults. The results were not as different as expected.
The researchers note that when looking at the images, they expected to see differences in the lateral occipitotemporal cortex (LOTC). This region of the brain is known to represent the visual information the brain processes to perceive the human body. Until now, it was assumed that individuals with autism, or ASD, would have that information clustered in a different way within their LOTC.
However, that isn’t the case at all. When looking at the data, the researchers found that individuals in the ASD and TD groups all showed similar structures of activations for their LOTCs. This could disprove the theory that individuals with ASD perceive the human body differently, thus leading to other social communication issues. The researchers also note that there were no significant differences in the size or strength of the activation of the LOTC in either group.
“These results suggest that adults with autism perceive visual body information in much the same way as neurotypical adults,” Professor Hirotaka Kurihara shared in a statement. “[This] challenges long-standing assumptions that differences in body-related perception contribute to social difficulties in ASD.”
To double-check the results, the researchers also looked at whether brain patterns could be linked to individual differences. However, they also found no strong connections in this area, either. So, while it is true that individuals with ASD might struggle to read emotions or intentions based on expressions and gestures, that struggle does not seem to be tied to how their brains perceive the human body or face, which could help further research dig deeper into what the actual underlying cause is.
We’re still a long way from truly understanding autism and the overall affect it has on the individuals affected by it. But researchers are working hard to learn more. We’ve also seen some pretty amazing breakthroughs in AI development, including an AI that can detect autism just by looking at how you hold objects.
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